No, it wasn't just that anthology, which I mentioned because Jeffrey
did. It seems to me pretty unarguable that a lot of interesting
poetry, or at least, poetry that I find deeply interesting, has been
marginalised in English poetry culture, to the detriment of that
culture's diversity: not just Prynne, who is maybe a special case, but
people like Lee Harwood or Doug Oliver or Geraldine Monk or Maggie
O'Sullivan or Barry MacSweeney or Bob Cobbing (make your own list: but
even in this random and far from comprehensive listing, it's clear
we're talking about very different kinds of poets). Why this might be
so isn't really my argument: I don't know enough about it, for a
start. Tim obviously has a few ideas. I just link it to a whole bunch
of centralising tendencies.
But the question of whether different kinds of poetry have been
marginalised or not isn't the same as claiming they're not there.
Jeffrey's claiming that nothing significant in British poetry has
happened since Wordsworth, which is not only a big claim that's bound
to get up a few noses, but also isolates Wordsworth as a giant in a
landscape carefully weeded to fit his thesis. I think that, pretty
much everywhere in the English-speaking world, poetry that extends the
possibility of form gets marginalised, because general public readers
feel alienated and intimidated by work that hits them as "difficult"
(whether or not it actually is "difficult"), and that's as much to do
with how people are taught to read, paraphrasing for comprehension
rather than attending to play, as anything else. It makes even
straightforward poetry a big ask for a lot of people, and means that
the poetry that's foregrounded tends to be user-friendly. Precisely
the same thing happens in the theatre. But that's another huge
generalisation that is tangential anyway.
I guess I'm just here wondering about empiricism, and if it really
exists in the way Jeffrey says it does, and why it's so essential that
poetry not be denotative, and why description and denotation seem to
be synonyms. I'm not denying the existence of a certain kind of poetic
conservatism, but Jeffrey's WW theory - which might apply to more
specific analyses - doesn't hold up as a sweeping magisterial survey.
To return to what he claimed about the "ascendancy" of US poetry:
"British poetry... has continued in the tradition of Wordsworthian
empiricism and parochialism, largely antagonistic to any use of a
poetic language that basis (sic) its effects on aspects other than
descriptiveness and anecdotal confession. How long this will remain
the case is uncertain. It has certainly been the case for over 200
years." That just seems to me pretty insupportable in the face of much
British/Irish (he counts Joyce as British) writing I've read, and also
in the face of much contemporary American writing, and it's kind of
irritating. But I guess it got me thinking about poetry again, which
is something.
Yes, as soon as you start arguing about these things you get directed
by the implicit terms, which ends up feeling misrepresenting. You have
to generalise in order to argue anything, but talking about poetry in
terms of nationality, however useful it might be as a categorical rule
of thumb, ends up being pretty meaningless. The French, The English,
The Americans. (Rimbaud, Wordsworth and Poe walk into a bar. Ouch.)
And I should really shut up now, talking about getting up noses, since
I know I'm being flippant.
xA
On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Jamie
McKendrick<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Alison,
> Sorry - I see it was Motion's and Morrison's anthology that made you think
> there wasn't any British poetry after 1945. My confusion was that there was
> nothing in it from before the late 1960s.
> I have the feeling Jeff's intention was also, in his own way, to erase the
> poets represented in that anthology.
>
>> "Wouldn't it make more sense to compare Heaney to Billy Collins? Heaney
>> might in fact come off better."
>
> (Might?)
>
> I see what you mean about comparing "like with like" but, even though
> they're usually crude and partisan, if comparisons are to be made, I'd
> almost prefer them to have free rein across all frontiers.
> (There's now another Heaney article in Jacket, by Rob Stanton, which
> contrasts one of Heaney's poems with one of Prynne's. The dice are loaded:
> it's very unilluminating on Heaney, but says some interesting things about
> Prynne - and at least the attempt doesn't try to pretend one of them isn't
> even a poet.)
> Your revulsion at these "reductive terms" (mainstream and avant garde) which
> I share - just having to use them in this discussion has filled me with
> self-loathing - might also argue against re-inforcing the walls between
> them.
>
> Maybe it's a mercy Blake's been left out so far.
> I haven't noticed Blake's influence on much modernism, but he and Shelley
> were surely far more of an influence on Yeats than Wordsworth ever was.
>
> Best wishes,
> Jamie
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 12:26 AM
> Subject: Re: "Has British Poetry had any significance since Wordsworth?"
>
>
> Yes,Tim. It's pretty obvious there is a conservative tendency (I
> mentioned the Penguin anthology, which Jeffrey also refers to, and
> which illustrates that baldly). I thought UK poetry was pretty
> uninteresting for years until the wonders of the internet exposed me
> to the "alternative" and I realised there was a lot of inspiring and
> rich stuff going on underneath the skin. Jamie, to be clear, by
> "conservative" I mean aesthetically conservative - it's obvious that
> matching poetic innovation with a place on the political spectrum is
> problematic, look at Pound - even David Jones flirted with Mosley's
> ideas.
>
> What bothers me about Jeffrey's argument is that he is accepting the
> same map as that Penguin anthology. So he's just as culpable of
> erasing people like Maggie O'Sullivan as Motion. If you're going to
> compare like with like, probably US and UK mainstream poetry look
> pretty similar, although with regional differences. God knows I've
> read a lot of seemingly identical US poems where the Poet reflects on
> landscape in contemplative poeticalness etc etc etc (featuring lots of
> "description"). But taking the US avant garde and comparing it with
> the UK mainstream (and boy do I hate these reductive terms, just take
> it as useful shorthand) is surely begging a lot of questions. Wouldn't
> it make more sense to compare Heaney to Billy Collins? Heaney might in
> fact come off better.
>
> Jeffrey, my point about defamiliarisation is that it's been a
> characterisation of several innovative poetics that stem from sources
> other than Wordsworth. You seem to be hunting down WW's genetic
> markers as if he's some kind of disease, leaping (aha!) on any symptom
> of (as far as I can see, anyway) relation to a reality as a Sign of WW
> deformity. Whether or not you like Language poetry (or Brecht, for
> that matter) is beside the point. And yes, here at the end of the
> world people were reading Wordsworth. And even writing to Mallarme,
> via the post, which was by ship in those days. Thank god for modern
> communications, eh?
>
> And blaming Wordsworth for Everything is just bizarre. I find it weird
> indeed that Blake (according to Joris/Rothenberg anyway the Big Daddy
> of modernism) isn't mentioned in this discussion at all.
>
> xA
>
> On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Tim Allen<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Again, have to agree with Jeff, he's not aggrandising US poetry.
>>
>> So Alison, this 'conservative ascendancy', you agree then, it is an
>> ascendancy.
>>
>> One of the weird things about this conservative ascendancy (and this is
>> something I've talked about before) is the way it isn't seen to be
>> conservative at all by people who run away from any hint of conservatism
>> in
>> the other art forms. Poets that many of us see as dull, mediocre,
>> reactionary, predictable, one-dimensional etc are lauded by people who
>> love
>> radical and experimental tv, films, novels, music etc. A lot of this is
>> down
>> to relativism and lack of access of course, but the phenomenon goes deeper
>> than that. But for now let's stay on the surface, lets' make a sweeping
>> statement: the Brits like their rock music and art to be radical but they
>> like their poetry to be safe and unproblematic, especially if it gives
>> them
>> room to image how thrillingly 'dangerous' it is (Oooo, look what she's
>> talking about here - how daring!) or how bravely it deals with problems
>> (Oooo, look at the skill with which he confronts this important issue) and
>> so on.
>>
>> Tim A.
>>
>> On 29 Aug 2009, at 11:26, Jeffrey Side wrote:
>>
>>> “I do wonder why you're generalising a certain conservative ascendancy
>>> in English poetry in order to aggrandise American poetry”
>>>
>>> I don’t think I’m aggrandising US poetry, more its influence, and that
>>> influence is largely a French one.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
|
